Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Sandra Stotsky critiques the Common Core in NYC on Monday night

Professor Sandra Stotsky, an
eminent critic of the Common Core standards being implemented in 46 states
including New York, will be speaking in NYC on Monday night, November 26, from
5-7 PM at Azure, 333 E. 91 St., along with Shael Suransky of DOE, who is a
strong defender of the standards.It should
be an interesting evening.For more
information see GothamSchools .

Stotsky is the main
author of the Massachusetts ELA standards, widely considered to be among the
best in the nation.Though the Common Core’s
ELA standards demand that students provide evidence in their writing for their
views, ironically there is no evidence for many of the Common Core's own components,
including the mandate that 50 percent of the assigned
reading in grades K-5 be “informational” text; and 70 percent in grades 6-12.

The only backing for
this split that has been provided by David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, the
authors of the ELA standards, is their similarity to the distribution of reading
passages on the NAEP exams, a rather weak rationale. And yet a cursory examination of the NAEP
framework reveals that in the 8th grade NAEP ELA, the proportion devoted to
informational text is only 55 percent, rather than 70 percent, so even this
flimsy evidence turns out to be untrue.By
their own standards, then, the authors of the Common Core should receive a
failing grade.

Some of the issues Stotsky will be addressing
are below; around the country she has also called for high
school English teachers to engage in Thoreau-like "civil disobedience” to ignore the Common Core's irrational and damaging prescriptions. For a longer analysis, see the report
she co-authored with English professor Mark Bauerlein for the Pioneer
Institute.

How Common Core’s ELA
Standards Place College Readiness at Risk

College readiness
will likely decrease when the secondary English curriculum prioritizes literary
nonfiction or informational reading and reduces the study of complex literary
texts and literary traditions.Common
Core itself provides no evidence to support its promise that more literary
nonfiction or informational reading in the English class will make all students
ready for college-level coursework. Common Core’s architects have inaccurately
and without warrant applied NAEP percentages for passage types on its reading tests
to the English and reading curriculum, misleading teachers, administrators, and
test developers alike.

The deficiencies in
Common Core’s literature standards and its misplaced stress on literary
nonfiction or informational reading in the English class reflect the limited
expertise of Common Core’s architects and sponsoring organizations. Its
secondary English language arts standards were not developed or approved by
English teachers and humanities scholars, nor were they research-based or
internationally benchmarked.The authors
of Common Core’s ELA Standards argue that more informational readings in high
school will improve college readiness, apparently on the sole basis that
students in college read mostly informational texts, not literary ones. We know
of no research, however, to support this piece of illogical reasoning.Rather, the history of college readiness in
the 20th century suggests that problems in college readiness stem from an
increasingly incoherent and less-challenging literature curriculum from the
1960s onward. Until that time, a literature-heavy English curriculum was
understood as precisely the kind of pre-college training students needed.

State law typically
specifies only that state tests must be based on state standards. Since most
states have adopted Common Core’s ELA standards as their state standards, and
Common Core’s College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading are
mainly generic reading skills, states can generate state-specific guidelines
for a secondary literature curriculum to eliminate this unwarranted division of
reading standards without conflicting with any of Common Core’s ELA standards.

Otherwise, state and local policy makers will see the
very problems in reading that Common Core aimed to remedy worsen. The
achievement gap will persist or widen.While
high-achieving students in academically-oriented private and suburban schools
may receive rich literary-historical instruction, students in low-performing
schools will receive watery training in mere reading comprehension.

Contact key education policymakers

Contact Board of Regents members' emails below.Click here to find your StateSenator; here for your AssemblymemberClick here to find your City Council member; click here to see contact information for Council members on Education CommitteeFor all your elected reps, click hereSpeaker Carl Heastie